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Lühiste M, Kenny M. Pathways to Power: Women's Representation in the

2014 European Parliament Elections. European Journal of Political Research

2016, (ePub ahead of Print).

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This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Lühiste M, Kenny M. Pathways to Power:

Women's Representation in the 2014 European Parliament Elections. European Journal of Political

Research 2016 which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-

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Pathways to Power:

Women’s Representation in the 2014 European Parliament Elections

Maarja Luhiste*

Lecturer in Politics of Gender

Newcastle University

Newcastle upon Tyne

Tyne and Wear NE1 7RU

United Kingdom

Maarja.Luhiste@ncl.ac.uk

Meryl Kenny

Lecturer in Gender and Politics

University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh EH8 9LF

United Kingdom

M.Kenny@ed.ac.uk

*Corresponding author

The authors thank Shane Martin, Rick Whitaker, Wilfried Swenden, participants at the 2014

ACCESS Europe Workshop on the European Elections, and the editors and the anonymous

reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions on this paper.

The authors are equal contributors to this article.

Keywords: political recruitment, candidate selection, women’s representation, gender quotas,

European Parliament.

ABSTRACT

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections produced a record proportion of women MEPs

overall (37%). Yet, these results vary widely across countries and parties. This paper aims to

explain these variations, evaluating not only who the elected representatives of the 8th

European Parliament are, but also how they got there. Are the paths to the EP the same for

women and men? Are there gender differences in terms of MEPs’ political experience? We

utilise a unique data set listing more than 700 elected MEPs and their background, party and

country characteristics to empirically examine who makes it to the EP and through which

route. The results of the analysis suggest no significant gender differences in the pathways to

the European Parliament. Yet, parties matter: more women were elected to the 8th EP from

left-wing than from right-wing or ‘new’ parties, and both men and (especially) women

representing right-wing parties tend to be politically more experienced than their fellow

MEPs from other types of parties. Furthermore, we find that men are more likely than women

to be promoted straight from party office to the European Parliament, suggesting that some

pathways to the EP are more open to women than others.

INTRODUCTION

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections were arguably the most important such

elections to date. Debates over the role and scope of the EU were highly politically salient –

including debates over the EU’s handling of the Eurozone crisis and the merits of austerity

measures, as well as plans for further political and economic integration. Also at stake, for the

first time, was the election of the Commission President. The elections, as expected, resulted

in gains for anti-European parties on the right and left in many countries, including the UK,

France and Greece. Yet, the 2014 EP elections were also notable in that they produced a

record proportion of women MEPs overall (37%).

This electoral outcome provides further weight to the argument that the EP is more 'women-

friendly' than most national parliaments, where the share of women MPs tends to be

significantly lower. Yet, while there is a large body of research dedicated to the relationship

between gender, candidate recruitment and women’s representation at the national level (see

for example Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Caul 1999; Kittilson 2006), decidedly less

attention has been paid to the recruitment and representation of women in arguably less

competitive 'second-order' elections, including elections to the EP. The research that does

exist on women's representation in the EP, meanwhile, provides a more nuanced picture,

highlighting cross-national as well as cross-party variations in EP election results (see for

example Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger 2014, 2015; Luhiste 2015). Indeed, in 2014 there

were significant cross-national differences in the exact share of women elected to the EP,

ranging from over 50 percent in Croatia, Ireland, and Finland to less than 20 percent in

Hungary, Cyprus and Lithuania. These differences could be partly caused by the fact that

most political parties do not have an unlimited supply of high quality, experienced candidates

to occupy the positions they must fill at various levels of government (Pemstein et al 2015).

The question, then, is how parties 'split' their supply of high quality candidates between

different electoral levels and who, in the end, gets sent to the European Parliament.

Uncovering and exploring these differences, therefore, requires a deeper exploration of the

political pathways to the EP.

This paper, therefore, seeks to investigate, at the individual level, who the elected

representatives of the 8th European Parliament are and how they got there. Are the paths to

the EP the same for women and men? Do different types of parties endorse similar

candidates? Are there gender differences in terms of MEP’s political experience? Individual

decisions at the candidate level do not take place within a vacuum; they are shaped by the

broader features of the party and political system (Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Norris 1997).

As such, the central aim of this paper is not only to examine potential differences in the

background of male and female MEPs, but to investigate how varying party and country

characteristics – such as party ideology, the adoption of candidate quotas, and the supply of

female politicians at the national level– influence men's and women's political pathways to

the EP. Utilising a unique data set listing more than 700 elected MEPs and their background,

party and country characteristics, we examine who makes it to the 8th EP through which

route. Importantly, we develop an MEP-based, rather than solely party- or country-based

approach that allows us to simultaneously take into account MEP, party, and country level

characteristics. The results of the analysis suggest no general gender differences in terms of

MEPs prior experience. However, men, more often than women, enter the EP directly from

party office, without holding a prior elected seat, while women are more likely to turn their

incumbency into an elected seat in the 8th EP. Moreover, party characteristics matter: more

women are elected to the 8th EP from left-wing than from right-wing parties, and women

representing right-wing political parties tend to be older than their fellow MEPs from other

types of parties.

WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

It is commonly assumed that women’s representation is higher at the EU level than the

national level. Indeed, the evidence confirms that, in general, women have higher levels of

descriptive (numerical) representation in the EP than in the lower legislative houses of the EU

member states, a pattern which has been consistent across three decades of direct European

elections (Vallance and Davies 1986; Norris 1997; Footitt 2002; Freedman 2002; Kantola

2010). In 2014, women were 37% of the EP, compared to 27% of MPs across the national

parliaments of the 28 EU member states.

Kantola (2010) outlines four central explanations for why there are more women in the EP

than in European national parliaments. First, institutional circumstances may differ because

some countries have different electoral systems for the two parliaments. Since 1999, MEPs

have been elected on the basis of proportional representation (PR), though member states are

free to choose their own voting system within these common principles. It is well-established

in the literature on women’s representation that women candidates generally tend to do better

in PR electoral systems with multi-member constituencies, than in plurality or majority

systems with single-member districts, as are used in British and French national elections, for

example (see for example Rule 1987; Paxton 1997; McAllister and Studlar 2002). Recent

research in this area, however, offers mixed findings as to the impact of electoral rules on

women’s numerical representation in the EP. While Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger (2014)

find that variations in electoral rules between EU member states do not have a systematic

impact on the number of women among all candidates, studies focusing on viable candidacy

suggest that the use of closed-list PR increases women’s party-determined viability and

chances of being elected to the EP (Luhiste 2015).

The second explanation for the higher proportion of women representatives in the EP centres

around the argument that the style of politics is different in the EP compared to some national

parliaments. Footitt (2002) shows that women MEPs consider the European Parliament more

‘women-friendly’ than other political bodies, primarily because the hours are more

structured, committee work involves discussions rather than debates, and the politics in

general is less confrontational than, for example, politics in the British parliament. A third,

and related, explanation is the fact that the EP is a relatively new institution, with the first

direct elections taking place in 1979, leaving less chance for the establishment of men’s

incumbency advantage and opening up more opportunities for women to be selected and

elected.

The fourth set of explanations offered for the more gender equal composition of the EP is that

the EP is considered less important and attractive when compared to national-level politics.

EP elections are frequently classified by scholars as ‘second-order’ events, in that they

resemble local or regional elections rather than ‘first-order’ presidential or parliamentary

ones which lead to the formation of a government (Marsh 1998; Hix and Marsh 2011). The

argument is that there is ‘less at stake’ in second-order elections (SOE) than in first-order

elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980; Schmitt 2005), which may increase women’s chances for

more equal representation. Because SOEs are thought to be less important, the selection and

election process is not as competitive as becoming a member of the national parliament,

which may facilitate women’s candidacies (Kantola 2010). Additionally, the fact that there is

‘less at stake’ may make SOEs less attractive for male candidates, opening up more

opportunities for women candidates to stand than in first-order elections (Chiva 2014).

Moreover, parties may see SOEs as an opportunity to ‘prove’ their gender equality

credentials by fielding larger number of women candidates in less important elections (Kovář

and Kovář 2012).

However, these kinds of explanations have become less convincing over time. The EU has

changed dramatically in recent years, both in scale and in scope, while successive EU treaty

amendments have increased the power of the European Parliament. There is, then, arguably

much more at stake now in EP elections – both for voters and for political parties – which

may make the process of becoming an MEP more competitive (Fortin-Rittberger and

Rittberger 2014; Whitaker 2014). Thus given that the proportion of women MEPs has

increased at the same time that the EP has gained more authority, the argument that ‘where

there is power, there are no women’ does not seem to hold in this case.

More importantly, while these standard explanations may offer some insights into why

women’s representation is higher at the aggregate level in the EP, they do not explain cross-

national and cross-party variations in women’s representation at EU-level (for recent

exceptions see especially Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger 2014, 2015; Luhiste 2015). As

Figure 1 highlights, women’s representation is not higher in the EP for all EU member states,

and there is considerable variation across countries and parties in terms of the proportion of

female politicians that they send to the EP, casting doubt on the assumption that getting

elected to the EP is necessarily easier for women than obtaining a seat in a national

parliament.

(FIGURE 1 HERE)

THEORISING GENDERED PATHWAYS TO THE EP

In seeking to explain these variations, this article asks the question of which women are being

elected to the EP, and how the attributes of these women compare with those of male MEPs.

Were paths to the 8th European Parliament the same for women and men? Were there gender

differences in terms of MEPs’ political experience in 2014? Were these differences

moderated by party and/or country characteristics?

While there is an emerging body of literature on political pathways to and political careers in

the EP, few studies address how these dynamics might affect men and women differently.

The small body of work that does exist in this area focuses mainly on the question of whether

politicians use the Parliament as a ‘retirement home’ or as a stepping-stone to a career in

national-level politics (Westlake 1994; Scarrow 1997). More recent studies have asked

whether a new pattern of European political career is in the making, pointing to the potential

emergence of a supranational political elite (Verzichelli and Edinger 2005; Beauvallet and

Michon 2010; Whitaker 2014). Yet, with few exceptions, this literature is almost entirely

gender-blind. For example, Whitaker (2014) argues that the EP is becoming a more attractive

option for a long-term political career, highlighting the evidence that the average length of

service of MEPs has increased and that turnover on committees has fallen. Yet, this study

makes no reference to women or gender, failing to ask, for example, whether career patterns

and the ‘costs’ of becoming an MEP may differ between men and women. Meanwhile, those

studies that do refer to gender tend to focus on the role of party- or country-level

characteristics in shaping descriptive levels of female representation in the EP (see for

example Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger 2014, 2015), but have not considered whether

gender shapes the routes and pathways men and women take to the EP.

In light of the wider literature on men’s and women’s access to political office, we expect to

find gender differences in terms of some aspects of MEPs’ career pathways (see for example

Murray 2010; Schwindt-Bayer 2011; Franceschet and Piscopo 2014; Allen et al 2014). First,

we expect to find gender differences in some aspects of legislator backgrounds, reflected in

the type of past political experience held by female and male MEPs. We anticipate that for

both men and women, the predominant career pathway will be upwards from other ‘second

order’ elective experience, including the local or regional level. We argue that this may

especially be the case for women MEPs, as politics ‘closer to home’ (that is, at the regional or

local level) is often argued to encourage women’s political participation (see for example

Ortbals et al 2012). In contrast, we envisage less movement downwards from the ‘first-order’

national level. Recent research on MEPs’ careers suggests that fewer MEPs are viewing the

EP as a ‘retirement home’, instead viewing it as either an attractive career option in itself, or

as a stepping stone to a national political career (Whitaker 2014). The evidence suggests,

then, that the goal for European politicians is generally either to move up the career ladder to

national office, or to stay put. However, while we hypothesise that politicians are unlikely to

move from national level office to the EP, we expect to see more women MEPs and more

experienced women MEPs from countries in which women enjoy higher levels of descriptive

representation at the national level. The expectation here is that in order to have higher shares

of women in 'first-level' elected office, these countries must have a larger pool of eligible

female candidates, increasing the likelihood of having higher numbers of women MPs at

other political levels, including the EP. With regards to incumbency, as above, the wider

literature on gender and political recruitment suggests that men are more likely to be

incumbent MEPs than women (see for example Murray 2008).

As already highlighted, analysing gender differences in political pathways to the EP also

requires paying attention to the wider political and institutional landscape (cf. Norris and

Lovenduski 1995; Norris 1997; Franceschet and Piscopo 2014). Research on women and

politics overwhelmingly finds that left parties are more likely to support women’s

candidacies because they espouse egalitarian ideologies that are centred on promoting

equality of outcome (Caul 1999; Kenny and Verge 2013). They are also usually more

strongly linked with women’s movement actors. Parties of the right, on the other hand,

promote an ‘equality of opportunity’ approach that centres on a gender-neutral understanding

of access to political power, or that emphasises a more traditional view of women’s roles

(Rule 1987; Chiva 2014). Leftist parties are also typically the first to introduce gender quotas

for women’s political representation, which may set in motion a process of ‘contagion’ across

parties, whereby rival parties will follow suit in order to compete (Matland and Studlar 1996;

Kenny and Verge 2013; Kenny and Mackay 2014). We would therefore expect more women

MEPs in the 2014 EP to come from parties of the left, rather than parties of the right.

Other scholars suggest that the left-right dimension is too simple to capture how ideology

affects women’s representation, arguing instead that researchers should distinguish between

‘Old Politics’ cleavages of class conflict and ‘New Politics’ issues and cleavages (Caul 1999;

Kittilson 2006). Research suggests that new parties may be more receptive to the entrance of

women and other marginalised groups than traditional parties (Matland and Studlar 1996;

Norris 1996). New parties, irrespective of ideology, may also be more open to newcomers as

they have fewer entrenched power-holders and incumbents. At the same time, however, we

recognize that not all new parties are the same – for example, parties of the New Left (such as

Green parties) might be much more likely to promote women’s representation than parties of

the radical right. We thus nuance our classification of ‘new parties’ by considering parties’

positions on European unification, thereby taking into account one of the distinctive features

of EP elections in comparison with national parliamentary contests (cf. Chiva 2014). Given

the EU’s key role from its inception as a gender equality actor (Kantola 2010), political

parties with a positive stance towards further EU unification might be more likely to take

gender equality concerns into consideration when selecting their candidates. Conversely,

Eurosceptic parties might be more likely to resist the ‘diffusion of gender equality norms’

from the European to the national level (Chiva 2014: 461). We therefore expect more women

to come from pro-EU parties than Eurosceptic parties.

In EU member states, parties’ menu of choices in terms of candidate selection for EP

elections is also conditioned by whether the party or state has adopted candidate gender

quotas (Luhiste 2015). Legal quotas, which are enacted through reforms to electoral laws or

sometimes constitutions, require that all parties in a particular country nominate a certain

percentage of female candidates. Voluntary or party quotas, on the other hand, are usually

outlined in party rules and statues and entail commitments by individual political parties to

include a specific proportion of women among their nominated candidates. We anticipate

therefore, that in EU countries with either legal or party quotas (or both), the percentage of

women MEPs will be higher than in those member states that do not use these measures.

Lastly, we expect to find gender differences between male and female MEPs in terms of basic

demographic features. We anticipate that as a result of prevailing gender norms that value

women’s roles as caretakers, female MEPs will enter politics when least affected by family

responsibilities and motherhood (cf. Franceschet and Piscopo 2014). For women with caring

responsibilities in particular, there are costs to being an MEP, including travel back and forth

between member states and Strasbourg and Brussels (Norris 1997). Thus, we would likely

see less women MEPs than male MEPs in their 30s and 40s, as women in these age ranges

are more likely to have child-caring responsibilities that constrain their political careers.

Instead, we would hypothesise that women MEPs would be largely concentrated on either

end of the age spectrum. On the one hand, we might expect more women MEPs from the

ages of 50 and above – comparative evidence suggests that women may delay their entry into

public office, in part to take time off to raise families (Schwindt-Bayer 2011; Franceschet and

Piscopo 2014). Overall, however, we would anticipate women MEPs to be younger as a

group than their male counterparts. Younger women may be more likely to run because some

of them do not yet have family responsibilities. In addition, men, who tend to have longer

political careers and are the majority of incumbents, are likely to be more heavily represented

amongst the older age groups within the European Parliament (cf. Murray 2010), while

women might be more likely to be new or recent MEPs. We expect this to particularly be the

case in the 2014 EP elections, where (as above) many of the smaller and ‘new’ parties put a

significant emphasis on bringing in ‘new blood’ - including younger candidates (both male

and female) with little political experience1. Given the above highlighted 'costs' of being an

MEP, we also control for the distance to Brussels.

DATA AND METHODS

1 Data on marital status and number of children was not available for most MEPs, so we did

not include these variables in our analysis, although we acknowledge that additional research

in this area would be very useful.

To empirically examine who makes it to the EP through which route, we utilise a purpose-

built unique data set listing all 751 elected MEPs to the 8th EP. To compile the data set, we

downloaded the full list of MEPs, elected in 2014, from the European Parliament website.

From the same source, we gathered information on each MEP’s sex, age, and national and

European party (group) affiliation. As the aim of this paper is to uncover the routes MEPs

have taken to the 8th EP, we then systematically searched and examined MEPs’ personal and

party websites to collect information on their past political background. In addition, we

utilised existing data sources, such as the 2014 European Election Study (EES) Voter Survey,

FEMM Committee (2014) report, and the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s database, to gather

data on each MEPs party and country characteristics. All this information was then added to

our data set, resulting in the first comprehensive new data source on the individual MEPs

elected in 2014.

Our central variable of interest is MEPs’ prior career position, held immediately before being

elected to the European Parliament2. We use two different measures of prior career position

in our analysis. First, we distinguish between five categories of prior career position: (1)

incumbent MEP, (2) national level political office (both legislative and government), (3)

regional or local level political office (both legislative and government), (4) central, regional,

local, or EP level party office, and (5) no political office. Secondly, we utilise a dummy

variable of whether an MEP held an elected office, at any level, immediately before being

elected to the 8th European Parliament or not, with not holding an elected office being the

reference category. MEPs who were incumbents, members of national, regional, or local

legislatures, or members of national, regional, or local governments immediately before being

elected to the EP in May 2014 are classified as holding an elected office. All other MEPs are

considered as not holding a prior elected office immediately before the May 2014 EP

elections, independent of whether they had held any elected office further in the past3.

We have linked this individual level data to information on various party and country level

indicators. We rely on the FEMM Committee (2014) report for information on legislative

candidate gender quotas and voluntary party quotas. In the 2014 EP elections, seven member

states (Belgium, France, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain) applied legislative

candidate gender quotas and in total 26 national parties across all EU member states had

adopted voluntary candidate gender quotas. We thus use two dichotomous variables –

voluntary party quotas and legislative quotas – in our models, with no quotas being the

reference category.

In terms of party ideology, we distinguish between both left-wing and right-wing parties, and

between pro-EU unification and anti-EU unification parties. Respondents of the 2014 EES

2 In some cases, an MEP may have held a political office in the past but was not an elected

member of any representative body while the 2014 EP elections took place. Such MEPs are

considered not to have held a prior elected office because they were not holding it

immediately before being elected to the 8th EP. 3 We acknowledge that MEPs with experience in elected office further in the past may differ

from those with no elected office experience. However, any data on all MEPs’ historical

political experience is bound to be limited by potential measurement errors, as the

information publicly available on the current MEPs early political careers is inconsistent and

irregular.

Voter Survey4 were asked to place parties on a 11-point scale with regards to their left-right

ideology5 as well as on their position on European unification6. We utilise the mean values

the parties received as a proxy of party ideology, with lower values indicating a more left-

wing placement on the left-right dimension and a more Eurosceptic position on the European

unification dimension7.

In addition, we relied on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s database for information on

women’s political representation at the national level in each of the 28 member states. While

all EU countries are required to utilise a proportional electoral system to elect their MEPs,

individual member states are free to vary the openness of ballot structure. As past research

indicates that the openness of ballot structure is likely to influence women’s electoral chances

(Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger 2014; Luhiste 2015), we control for the presence or absence

of preference vote option, with the latter being the baseline category.

As the dependent variables of interest are categorical (female/male; prior elected office

experience/no experience) and the data are clustered by party and country, we employ robust

standard errors and estimate both logistic regression models without country-fixed effects and

conditional logistic regression models with country-fixed effects.

RESULTS

In order to explain gendered pathways to the 8th European Parliament, we first explore the

conditions under which women have higher chances of being elected as MEPs. To examine

this, we estimate a logistic regression model that includes candidate, party, and country level

characteristics that are known to explain women’s representation. As Table 1 reveals, party

ideology, the share of women in national legislature, and MEPs’ age account for most of the

gender variance, while quota rules show little statistically significant impact. Therefore, while

4 As the data on parties’ ideological positions, measured by the Comparative Party Manifesto

(CMP) project, were not available while writing the manuscript, we have had to rely on

alternative sources. 5 Respondents of the EES 2014 Voter Survey were asked the following question concerning

up to 8 national political parties: ‘And about where would you place the following political

parties on this scale? How about the...? Which number from 0 to 10, where '0' means "left"

and '10' means "right" best describes this party?’ 6 Respondents of the EES 2014 post-election Voter Survey were asked the following question

concerning up to 8 national political parties: ‘And about where would you place the following

parties on this scale? How about the (Party X)? Which number from 0 to 10, where 0 means

“[European integration] already gone too far” and 10 means “[European integration] should

be pushed further” best describes [Party X]?’ 7 Respondents of the 2014 EES Voter Survey were not asked to position independent

candidates and not all of the parties that gained representation in the 8th European Parliament

on the left-right and EU unification scale. This means that some elected MEPs resulted with

missing values, reducing the final sample size to 707 MEPs. As a result, MEPs with no

national party affiliation (independents) and MEPs representing very small parties (usually

the only MEPs from the given party) are missing from the sample. However, there are no

statistically significant gender differences across the MEPs’ prior elected office backgrounds

dependent on whether they are included in the analysis or not. Also, analysis including all

751 MEPs (but including a simplified categorical variable for measuring party ideology)

yields to similar results with regards to other co-variates of interest.

quota rules are designed to increase the number of women among candidates, their

effectiveness in increasing the probability of electoral success for women remains limited.

Overall, left-wing parties are significantly more likely to have a female representative to

Brussels than right-wing parties. The magnitude of the effect is quite large, with an MEP

being a woman being 18 percentage points higher for the most left-wing party compared to

the most right-wing party. Hence, our data confirms the theoretical expectations of left-wing

parties embracing more egalitarian ideologies and thus promoting more gender equal

representation than other types of parties. While parties which are more Eurosceptic tend to

be less likely to have women MEPs than more Europhile parties, these results fail to reach

traditional levels of statistical significance (Table 1).

Table 1 also shows that country level characteristics matter. The higher the proportion of

women parliamentarians at the national level, the more likely member states are to elect more

women to the EP. For example, if women constitute 20 percent of elected representatives in

the national legislature, the probability of a woman representing this country in the EP is .34

compared to .42 for a country in which the share of women among MPs is 40 percent (Table

1). These results suggest that countries with higher levels of descriptive representation may

be better able to ‘afford’ to send more women to Brussels as they are more likely to have a

larger supply of high quality, experienced women candidates.

(TABLE 1 HERE)

MEPs’ age also explains gender variance in the EP. As we expected, women MEPs tend to be

younger than male MEPs. The estimated probabilities suggest that the likelihood of the

youngest MEP being a woman is more than 25 percentage points higher than the likelihood

of the oldest MEP being female. These results point to a generational change: the gradual

replacement of older MEPs is likely to lead to higher levels of women’s representation in the

EP. However, when examining the relationship between age and party ideology in the EP,

this assumption no longer fully holds. The estimates illustrated in Figure 2 show that age

decreases the likelihood of the MEP being a woman for left-wing parties but not for right-

wing parties8. While the probability of sending an older woman of more than 60-years of age

to Brussels is very low for all types of parties (and does not vary in a statistically significant

way across party ideologies), left-right ideology is an important determinant of MEP’s gender

in the younger and middle-aged cohort. The age differences amongst female MEPs are

smaller when it comes to the EU-unification dimension. Yet, more Europhile parties have a

statistically significantly higher likelihood of having middle-aged female representatives in

the 8th EP than more Eurosceptic parties9. Due to significant differences in the probabilities of

having younger and middle-aged female representative across party ideologies, generational

change will likely be constrained by which types of parties are electorally stronger.

8 Parties that received from the EES 2014 Voter Survey respondents a mean value smaller or

equal to 6.66 (median value for all the parties) on the left-right scale, are classified as left-

wing parties. Parties that received a higher value than that, are classified as right-wing

parties. 9 Parties that received from the EES 2014 Voter Survey respondents a mean value smaller or

equal to 5.83 (median value for all the parties) on the EU unification scale, are classified as

Eurosceptic parties. Parties that received a higher value than that, are classified as Europhile

parties.

(FIGURE 2 HERE)

As an initial investigation of the relationship between gender and prior political experience,

we estimated a logistic regression model with and without country fixed effects explaining

individual MEPs' likelihood of either having or not having prior elected office before entering

the EP. As Table 2 reveals, women, in general, are just as likely as men to hold a previous

elected political office (either at the EP, national, or local level). Moreover, the finding that

parties do not send inexperienced women (or men) to the EP may again indicate that the EP is

not considered as 'second-order' by party gatekeepers as some media commentators and

researchers often assume. It is also noteworthy that the findings presented do not vary

substantially across countries. In the majority of countries, the percentage of women with

prior elected office experience is similar to the share of men holding an elected seat prior to

being voted into the 8th EP. However, in Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia women are

considerably more likely than men to have held a prior elected office, while the opposite

applies for the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, and Malta. All of the outliers represent

countries with very small EP delegations, meaning that the noted gender differences within

these member states can often be the result of only one male or female MEP not having held

a prior elected office.

Table 2 also shows that MEPs representing Eurosceptic or left-wing parties are less likely to

have held an elected office before entering the 8th EP compared to the MEPs from more

Europhile or right-wing parties, respectively. This is likely to be the case due to the fact that

many of the Eurosceptic parties competed for the first time in the 2014 European Parliament

elections and/or lacked political representation at the national level. Moreover, many parties

put a deliberate emphasis on selecting candidates with no (or limited) political experience to

distinguish themselves from mainstream parties – in the Italian 5 Stars Movement, for

example, there was some controversy over the candidacy of now-MEP Giulia Moi, who was

accused of hiding previous political experience.

The results in Table 2 also point to a weak candidate quota effect. The model without country

fixed effects but with additional country level control variables indicates that MEPs

representing parties that apply voluntary candidate quotas are more likely to have held an

elected office before being voted into the 8th European Parliament (see Model 1 in Table 2).

This effect, however, loses traditional levels of significance in a model including country-

fixed effects.

To further examine the impact party characteristics have on MEPs’ pathways to the European

Parliament, Models 2 and 4 in Table 2 include interaction effects of MEP gender and party

characteristics. In addition, our data indicate that women from parties that use candidate

gender quotas are just as likely to have held an elected political office before entering the 8th

EP in 2014 as women from parties without such rules. Furthermore, women MEPs from

countries with legal candidate quotas are more likely than women from countries with no

such rules to have prior elected office experience. This means that the potential ‘quota

women’ are no less politically experienced than women from parties and countries without

quota rules (in fact, they may be more so). Also, given that the MEPs elected from parties

that employed candidate quotas are somewhat more likely to have held a prior elected office

but this effect does not vary by gender, this further indicates that the quota measures tend to

increase the overall level of experience of elected MEPs and not that of only women or men.

While the negative interaction effect of gender and left-right party ideology suggests that

women MEPs representing right-wing parties are somewhat more likely to have held prior

elected office than women from left-wing parties, these results do not yield to traditional

levels of statistical significance.

(TABLE 2 HERE)

While the initial analysis show no significant gender differences with regards to MEPs’ prior

experience in elected office, we still need to investigate whether women and men enter the

EP from a similar type of elected (or non-elected) office. In order to test this, we estimated a

multinominal logistic regression model predicting the likelihood of the MEP being an

incumbent, having held a national or a regional level political office, coming from a party

office, or having no prior political experience. As Figure 3 reveals, there is the highest

probability of an MEP being an incumbent compared to other prior career position options.

Moreover, women MEPs have a slightly higher probability (.49) of being incumbents than

men (.48 probability), though the difference is not statistically significant. The analysis thus

indicates that once women manage to get elected to the EP, they are at least as likely as men

to hold on to their elected seat.

In contrast, while the probability of an MEP being a political outsider does not vary

considerably by gender (.12 for women, .11 for men), the likelihood of a male MEP coming

from a party office is statistically significantly higher than the probability of a woman

entering the EP directly from a party office (.10 for women compared to .15 for men). Hence,

in a situation where a politician does not hold an elected seat before the EP elections, parties

may be more likely to facilitate an upward career move for men working in the party office

compared to women. Alternatively, it is also likely that the supply of men in party office is

greater than that of women, explaining the subsequent effects.

As can be seen from Figure 3, in most cases, women and men MEPs do not differ

substantially from each other in terms of prior career position. The probability of being a

political outsider or coming from either national or regional/local level political office is the

same for both men and women MEPs. Interestingly, the probability of entering the EP from

national elected office (.16 for women and .18 for men) is much higher than that of coming

from regional/local level politics (.12 for women, .10 for men). Thus the analysis suggests

that political careers are more likely to move downward (from national level to the European

level) than upward (from regional/local level to the European level) for both female and male

MEPs. These results may be explained by the increasing salience of European issues in

national politics as well as by the increasing importance of the European Parliament in EU

level politics, thus making the EP less of a second order office than traditionally perceived.

(FIGURE 3 HERE)

CONCLUSION

The 2014 European Parliament Elections confirm, on aggregate, that women are better

represented in the EP than in most national parliaments, while also highlighting cross-

national and cross-party variations in the numbers of women elected at European level. In

seeking to explain these variations, this article has explored the MEP, party and country level

characteristics that shape men’s and women’s pathways to the EP, offering new insights into

who the members of the 8th European Parliament are and how they got there.

Our investigation of the gendered pathways to the EP yields some surprising findings in light

of previous work in this area. Existing research on women’s descriptive representation at the

national level suggests that the best predictors of women’s legislative representation are

institutional factors, including the type of electoral system in use and the implementation of

gender quotas. Our study confirms that the wider context does matter for female politicians in

European elections, showing, as we expected, that more women MEPs are elected from

countries with higher levels of women’s representation at the national level. However, we

find that other institutional factors – including gender quotas and electoral ballot structure -

are not statistically significant in explaining the gender variation among MEPs. The question,

of course, is not just whether quotas are ‘on the books’, but whether they are actually

followed, pointing to the need for further research into the implementation of these measures

at EP level.

What matters most in explaining levels of women’s representation in the European

Parliament is parties - our findings suggest that gains in women’s representation at EP level

continue to be constrained by party ideology. Research on women and politics has

increasingly challenged the received wisdom in the field with regards to party ideology and

leftist dominance on women’s representation, pointing, for example, to the increasing number

of women selected and elected by conservative parties around the world (see for example

Celis and Childs 2014). Yet, in contrast to these findings, our study highlights the continuing

importance of the traditional left-right cleavage for women’s representation in the EP, with

more women elected from left-wing parties than from right-wing parties. Moreover, we find

that MEPs’ pathways to the European Parliament vary by party ideology, with parties on the

right of the political spectrum and/or holding more pro-European unification attitudes

sending more experienced politicians to the EP than left-wing parties and/or more

Eurosceptic parties. We assume that the reason why women MEPs from right-wing parties

are more experienced than their colleagues from left-wing parties is partly due to the fact that

women representing left-wing parties tend to be younger, while the likelihood of a female

MEP from a right-wing party does not vary much by age. This suggests that right-wing

parties keep promoting the candidature of young men over young women, thereby reducing

the chances that generational replacement alone will solve the issues of women’s political

underrepresentation.

Overall, however, we find that women’s and men’s paths to the European Parliament are

more similar than different – women and male MEPs have comparable levels of prior

political experience in elected office and, in fact, women MEPs have a slightly higher

probability of being incumbents than men, indicating that once women make it to the EP,

they have a good chance of being re-elected. Moreover, women from parties that use

candidate gender quotas have similar levels of political experience as women from parties

without quota rules, findings which correspond more broadly to research on the effect of

quotas on the types of women elected to legislatures at the national level (see for example

Murray 2010; Schwindt-Bayer 2011; Franceschet and Piscopo 2014; Allen et al 2014). In

fact, women MEPs from countries with legal quotas are more experienced than women from

countries without such rules. On the one hand, these findings may bolster the efforts of

campaigners seeking to promote women’s representation, confirming that while women

MEPs may be numerically under-represented, they are just as ‘qualified’ as their male

counterparts. Yet, on the other hand, these findings may suggest that women are simply

replicating traditional gendered pathways to political office, rather than bringing different

experiences and backgrounds to the European Parliament, raising wider questions as to the

potential impact on the substantive representation of women’s policy concerns (cf. Allen et al

2014).

The most common prior career position of the MEPs of the 8th EP is an elected seat in the

previous assembly of the European Parliament, while the second most likely pathway is

through national level political office. Men, however, are more likely than women to be

promoted straight from party office to the European Parliament, suggesting that women may

still be excluded from some elite political networks. These findings indicate that the EP may

serve, on the one hand, as an individual career path to which politicians aspire. Once

candidates have managed to secure a seat, they tend to hold on to it, confirming findings from

other studies that point to the rise of ‘European careerists’ and the emergence of a supra-

national political elite (see for example Whitaker 2014). On the other hand, the fact that the

second most likely pathway to the European Parliament, for both men and women, is through

national level elected office may suggest that the EP is becoming less of a second order office

than traditionally perceived, raising questions as to whether progress on women’s

representation at European level will continue as the EP becomes a more desirable option for

a political career.

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Figure 1: Percentage of Women MEPs and MPs by country, 2014

Table 1: Explaining gender variation among elected MEPs (Logistic regression coefficients)

Coef. (S.E.) Change

Age (in years) -0.02 (0.01) ** -0.26

Party ideology: Left-Right (std.) -0.19 (0.09) * -0.18

Party ideology: EU unification (std.) 0.11 (0.08) 0.15

Voluntary party quota -0.01 (0.01) -0.08

Legislative quota -0.03 (0.19) -0.01

Preference voting -0.21 (0.17) -0.05

Distance to Brussels -0.05 (0.06) -0.03

% women MPs 0.02 (0.01) + 0.14

Constant 0.13 (0.37)

N (level 1) 707

N (level 2) 28

Wald chi2 120.01

Prob > chi2 0.00

Peudo-R 2 0.22

**p<0.01; *p<0.05; +p<0.10

Robust standard errors in parentheses.

Change represents the maximum change in probability of the independent variable holding all

other variables constant and their means and modes.

20

Figure 2: Estimated probabilities of electing a female or a male MEP by age and party

ideology

Note: Estimates represent the probability of the elected MEP being a woman. Estimates are

derived from the logistic regression model (Table 1) with robust standard errors; broken line

represents 95% confidence intervals.

21

Table 2: Explaining the likelihood of holding prior political office (Logistic regression coefficients)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Coef. (S.E.) Change Coef. (S.E.) Coef. (S.E.) Coef. (S.E.)

Woman 0.09 (0.25) 0.02 -0.27 (0.27) 0.06 (0.21) 0.20 (0.26)

Age (in years) 0.05 (0.01) ** 0.46 0.06 (0.01) ** 0.05 (0.01) ** 0.05 (0.01) **

Party ideology: Left-Right (std.) 0.33 (0.10) ** 0.24 0.42 (0.13) ** 0.23 (0.10) * 0.15 (0.06) *

Party ideology: EU unification

(std.) 0.31 (0.17) + 0.32 0.34 (0.17) * 0.40 (0.11) ** 0.33 (0.13) *

Voluntary party quota 0.04 (0.01) ** 0.13 0.02 (0.01) -0.02 (0.04) -0.04 (0.04)

Legislative quota -0.11 (0.37) -0.02 -0.46 (0.34)

Preference voting 0.01 (0.29) 0.00 0.09 (0.28)

% women MPs 0.02 (0.02) 0.11 0.02 (0.02)

Woman * Left-Right -0.24 (0.18) -0.22 (0.22)

Woman * EU unification -0.11 (0.20) 0.02 (0.22)

Woman * Party quota -0.23 (0.67) -0.79 (0.56)

Woman * Legislative quota 1.17 (0.42) **

Constant -1.99 (0.62) ** -1.96 (0.66) **

Country-fixed effects No No Yes Yes

N (level 1) 707 707 694 694

N (level 2) 28 28 26 26

LR chi2 / Wald chi2 61.33 185.13 52.33 57.74

Prob > chi2 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

AIC 714.94 711.35 578.54 583.13

**p<0.01; *p<0.05; +p<0.10

Robust standard errors in parentheses.

Change represents the maximum change in probability of the independent variable holding all other variables constant and their means and

modes.

22

Figure 3: Predicted probabilities of prior career positions for women and men MEPs

Note: Predicted probabilities are obtained from a multinominal logistic regression model

(with robust standard errors), controlling for MEPs age, party ideology, candidate quotas,

openness of ballot structure, and proportion of women in national parliament. All other

variables are held constant at their means and modes.